Sound, to be more concrete, it should be Media Affordances, which is the topic of this lecture. Rachel Wilson showed us a PowerPoint of the topic, and that PowerPoint has almost 70 sides, that amazed me. To be honest, I download that when I back to home, reviewing the lesson. Too many knowledge need to be knew and remembered. Indeed, I have spent a lot of time to read that PowerPoint although some people told me that is not worthy.
In this PowerPoint, there are seven parts to introducing the Media Affordances (Sound). There are Listening VS. Hearing, What is Sound, Components of Sound, Types of Sounds, Sound perspective, Recording Sound and Microphones etc.
For the first part, listening and hearing, these two quiet similar words are actually different. According to the PowerPoint from Professor Rachel, Hearing is an ability of perceiving sound, and Listening almost depends on attention. It can be easy to understand by listened to the music made by John Cage who was an American composer, music theorist, writer, and artist. The most famous music is 4’33’’ but this music makes many musicians angry, because there is no traditional melody in that music. Also, for me, I cannot understand what he wanted to express when I listened 4’33’’ firstly. However, I do think that his music is one of the best examples that can help people to understand the difference between listening and hearing. It makes me remember the video called the beat I was born without.
This video talks about a experience of a woman who is deaf. She cannot hear everything since she came to this world so she cannot normally communicate with normal people, that makes she feels very lonely. Travelling to Holland, she found out a community that lots of deaf people gather together, enjoying dancing and listening in clubs. Not only this woman, almost every deaf people here express that they can listen to the music, dancing with the beat.
So, to be honest, everyone can listen to music if they focus.